Asking the right questions to new athletes: Get off to the right start
Looking to improve your ability to personalize training for new athletes? Then you're in the right place.
WEEKLY WISDOM: LEARN EVERYTHING YOU POSSIBLY CAN
THE IMPORTANCE OF ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS
As a coach, being able to take on a new athlete is an exciting yet difficult venture. What makes it difficult, being rather obvious, is that you start by not knowing much about them (if anything). You don’t know their training, their injury history, their tendencies, their physical and mental strengths and weaknesses, how they’ll respond to various stimuli, how they’ll respond to your coaching style/system, etc. On top of that, you might find that the they don’t have a great idea of these things themselves, especially those who are less self-aware and/or educated. Unfortunately, there are coaches out there who will essentially copy-paste training plans from one athlete to the next, not effectively considering the athlete. As Steve Magness and Jon Marcus always say, you shouldn’t conform an athlete to your system, but rather, conform your system to the athlete. You might have to significantly tweak your system in order to optimize growth for an individual; if you’re too stubborn to change your ways and/or stick to largely copy-pasting, you’re wasting the athlete’s time and your own and the athlete will not improve as you both hoped. That’s what makes coaching fun: No one athlete is the same and thus, each athlete’s training should have its own unique composition. The training may rhyme from one athlete to the next, but it shouldn’t look identical. With this in mind, it is crucial that you get to know your athlete as best you can in the beginning of your relationship so that you start on the right track. To paint this full picture, you must ask the right questions and stay extra observant in the beginning weeks and months of a new athlete’s training program. Ask the wrong questions and/or not enough questions and you and your athlete may come to a dead end of injury, performance stagnation, disenjoyment, etc. Let’s talk about some guidelines to follow for asking the right questions…
GUIDELINES TO FOLLOW
I’ve broken up my questionnaire for new athletes into four parts…
Last year / training norms
Diving deeper
Looking ahead
Homework
Let’s talk about each of these.
LAST YEAR/TRAINING NORMS
I first like to run a background check on the athlete, learning about what the last year or more has looked like for them. For those who post their runs on a social media like Strava, you may be able to learn quite a bit from just that. Good things to know are…
Their peak and average weekly mileages
Their peak and average long runs
Their average easy run pace and distance and max easy run distance
Their regular training structure (e.g., Tuesday and Friday workouts with a Saturday long run and the other days easy)
What types of workouts they’ve done and to what durations, intensities, and frequencies
Similarly, what training has looked like for them
Race performances
Injury history (historically but also within the last year)
Their pre-run routine and post-run routine
Strength training
Importantly, if the athlete has come from a previous coach, ask that coach for their training plans and, if you can, have a chat with them to learn all that you can about the individual. If they were a good coach, that might give you the most value out of anything here.
DIVING DEEPER
After getting a solid understanding of their last year, the next step is to dive deeper into their individual characteristics. This is where I hit on four major points to talk about things such as…
Strengths/weaknesses
Their likes and dislikes, ranking various run types based on their perceived level of difficulty
If they feel better running fast on the track, road, or grass
Recovery
Their recoverability from various run types
How they feel when they’re fatigued and/or overtrained (e.g., dead legs, flat legs, lethargic, unmotivated, etc.)
How their nutrition is
How their sleep is
Their work life balance
Peaking
How drops in volume make them feel
How speedwork makes them feel
Motivation
Their internal and external motivators
Arguably the most important section from above is “Recovery.” The answers you get on these questions can NOT be underlooked and play a huge part in the training composition. If, for example, the athlete is getting poor sleep, not eating great, and has a busy work-life balance, it’s going to be tricky to get the athlete to fully absorb the work you prescribe. After all, as Magness wrote in his book, The Science of Running, “Stress + Rest = Growth.” Although you can’t really do much about their work-life balance, you’d want to address why they’re getting poor sleep and not eating great, and from that, see if there’s anything that can be done to improve those key contributors to recovery. If there isn’t anything that can be done, the training load will have to be dialed back so the individual can properly recover from one day to the next.
LOOKING AHEAD
The third step is to look ahead to the future to discuss…
Short-term and long-term goals
The optimal training structure for them
Their training capacity with work and life in mind
Their expectations for me
My expectations for them
Understanding these components can help you to see the bigger picture for the runner in question and appropriately envision their training over the next several years or more. Additionally, you can get a great idea of their level of commitment and if there’s a deeper purpose to why they run.
HOMEWORK
The final, not completely necessary step is to assign some homework to the new athlete to learn just a little bit more. This is something I picked up from Magness, amongst other things seen above, which is to have them take one or all of the following tests:
The caveat to this is I have yet to make an athlete do this as I only recently picked up this process (thanks, Magness) but the idea behind this is you can learn more about who they are and their individual psychology.
Another homework assignment I have recently added is for them to read through my coaching appendix, an ever-expanding document capturing my current knowledge base on various important topics. However, the alternative, and possibly better, approach to this is to meet with them in-person (or digitally) to discuss the important concepts that you intend to apply. I’ll probably push for the latter option going forward and just have them refer back to that document as needed if, say, they forget what something is on the training plan. If you omit this pretty essential step, you will likely find your athlete bombarding you with questions about the contents of the training plan (unless you provide concrete descriptions in the plan itself). A big mistake I have made in the past is assuming my athletes know what I’m writing, but turns out not everyone knows what I know! Who would’ve thought?! Moral of the story: don’t make any assumptions about an athlete and, if anything, be overly explanatory to start.
YOU MIGHT STILL GET SOME THINGS WRONG
Yeah, that’s right. Even if you ask the right questions and get a good idea of the athlete you’re working with, you’ll likely still make some mistakes in the first one or two training blocks and that’s okay! Until you see how the athlete’s responding to the training over the course of many months, you can’t guarantee perfection. For this reason, it takes time before you can feel properly confident in the work you’re prescribing, and there’s really no way around this. However, asking the right questions at the start of your coach-athlete relationship will set you down a much better path than otherwise and certainly shorten the time it takes to optimize an athlete’s training. If you take away anything from this post, it should be this: Take the time to get to know new athletes and consider all components when establishing their training.
For reference, this Google document is my current guideline I use with new athletes.
If you have further questions, please ask me of course! See my contact information at the bottom of this post; I would love to help. If you’re a fellow coach, drop a comment on your process of taking on new athletes!
Next up on All Things Running… Lactate’s three flavors: tolerance, clearance, and shuttling.
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If you want personalized coaching and/or training advice, I’d be happy to help. You can email me at jacobreesmontgomery@gmail.com or send me a direct message on Instagram.